The “Remember When Gas Was Cheap?”  post on 4/20/06 provoked a lot of response. That post looked back at the rise of gas prices, written from the future perch of 4/20/09.

In that futuristic look back to see how gas went from $3.00 in April, 2006 to the $7.33 price in April, 2009, I wrote of events and consequences during that three year time period.  One such event ‘ocurred’ in October 2007, when, with the price of gas at $4.45, GM announced that it was shutting down the Hummer division because of a drastic fall-off in sales and the refusal of Hummer dealers to take delivery on additional vehicles since the all had such a large backlog of the gas guzzlers.

Yesterday, May 13, 2006, it was reported that GM said it would stop building the H1, the first and largest Hummer model.  12,000 H1’s have been sold to the public in 14 years, but only 98 so far this year.

Now, my prediction that the entire division would be shut down did not come to pass, but then again it is May 2006.  Let’s see where Hummer is in October 2007.  Straining my elbow here for some back slapping acknowledgement, I will take credit for being directionally correct in my prediction.  it reminds me of the “Odd Week for a Futurist’ post when I spoke about the fact that when the “Remember” post was made and I predicted that gas would be at $3.60 by July 4, 2006 I was immediately …

“The future, what’s that?”

-Belisario, one of a group of hunter-gatherers who left the Columbian jungle to join the modern world

This was the “Quotation of the Day” from yesterday’s New York Times.  It was lifted from the remarkable front page article about the Nukak-Maku and that a group of almost 80 of this Stone Age tribe wandered out of the Amazon jungle, declaring that they were ready to join the modern world.

The Nukak-Maku are clearly unprepared for their new world.  “The Nukak have no concept of money, of property, of the role of government, or even of the existence of a country called Columbia.  They ask whether the planes that fly overhead are moving on some sort of invisible road.”

Now that, and other parts of the article gave me a sad sense of loss on behalf of humanity, but that is not for this post.

“The future, what’s that?”    What a question!  What purity!  What it says about how tribe has been living for centuries- without a concept called ‘future’.  It strikes at the heart of being a futurist and of a blog with the tag line: ” A Future Look at Today”.

If I had to declare a religious or spiritual orientation, it would be Buddhism.  From that vantage point the obvious answer is that Now, this Moment, is the only time there ever is.  The past is a collection of memories, of stories, and the future is a projection, and both are illusions.

Well Belisario, this new world you are entering looks …

[Reader note: in the short life of this blog your feedback has been important. There have been two format suggestions that have been made several times. First, people have said they like the orginal ideas, depth of content and the writing. Second they have said that they often do not have the time to read a lengthy post. Therefore, starting with this post, I will break up subject matter that requires length, such as the subject of disintermediation, into more frequent, shorter posts in proper conceptual sequence. Please let me know if you like this approach.]

The first post on disintermediation, “Disintermediation: a Buzz Word to Bring Back” suggested that this term should be used more often for the simple fact we are in an age of disintermediation. We are in one of those times that happens every few hundred years in human history when, in the course of 50-60 years, society is transformed.

The obvious primary agent of disintermediation in this transformative era is, of course, the Internet. In the century between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the agent was Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable type printing press. History will show that the Internet is and will be at least as transformative as that invention has been.

As defined in the above mentioned post, disintermediation is:

“the undoing of the act of intermediating” or “the removal of the intermediary person or entity”

During the Internet 1.0 time of the late 1990s the …

The issue of energy and the systemic societal addiction to petroleum around the world is at the top of the list of important issues we now face.  It, more than any other current issue affects how the future of humanity will be written.  As stated in the ‘blog origins’ section of this site, I believe we are approaching a choice point that could determine how our history will be written 300 years from now.  In the decades ahead, humanity might well have the opportunity to begin to take the next major step in its evolutionary journey.  If that occurs, it will be in part due to a successful global handling of the impending energy crisis.  Let us take a look at where we are and what might happen.

Three Strikes and We’re Out

Most Americans, even if they are not baseball fans, understand what ‘three strikes and you re out’ means.  You get three chances.  Three chances to hit the ball, get on base, score a run, solve a problem, seize an opportunity.  Well, we now are facing our third strike.

The first strike was the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-74, when in the short span of three months the price of oil and gasoline increased four fold.  Oil went from $3 to almost $12 a barrel and gasoline went from $.30 to $1.20.  What was the response?  The Alaskan pipeline was approved, Americans frantically clamored for and then purchased smaller cars and the economies of Europe and the United States went into …